Ari Roth had been the artistic director of Theater J for 18 years, years in which he grew the theater—which is a part of the D.C. Jewish Community Center—into a formidable force among Washington theaters.

Henry Wager is The Prince in the Washington National Opera Company’s family holiday production of Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s “The Little Prince,” composed by Rachel Portman and originally staged by WNO Artistic Director Francesca Zambello

Director Ethan McSweeny manages to pull quite a bit of the play’s rich diversity together in his bewitchingly engaging production at the Shakespeare Theatre Company in Sidney Harman Hall through Jan. 11.

Whether it's "A Christmas Carol," "Pippin" or "Black Nativity," this season is full of all things Christmas on stage or in the choir -- along with the added energy of "Five Guys Named Moe," "Diner" or "Fiddler on the Roof."

Rock and roll, the Library of Congress, members of the House and Senate, a Washington audience in a Daughters of the American Revolution hall. Only someone like Billy Joel could make it work all together.

The Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts hosted its annual ball Sept. 13. The soiree was held on the stage of the Filene Center and was presented in partnership with the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates.

Arvind Manocha, the newly installed President and CEO at the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts, spoke at the Georgetown Media Group’s second Cultural Leadership Breakfast at the George Town Club Sept. 11.

The native of St. Lucia, board member of Shakespeare’s Globe, member of the Royal Shakespeare Company and one-time global television star, is on another tour of “King Lear,” the Bard’s grandest, most difficult, most compelling tragedy.

The highly anticipated "If/Then" is at the National Theatre before its Broadway debut next spring. Reviewer Gary Tischler praised the talent involved but added that some changes should be made in the show.

At a time when the new teen music sounds of rock and roll had emerged with its own king in Elvis Presley, the classical music world produced the equivalent of a rock star in the person of pianist Van Cliburn.

The Hamilton hosted benefit for the documentary "The Bayou: DC's Killer Joint" this Sunday night. The Feb. 17 event featured performances from a revue of musicians who graced the legendary stage in Georgetown.

The opening night performance had an electric feel to it and an almost total willingness on the part of the audience to join in. Mary Bridget Davies delivered an uncannily authentic performance as singer Janis Joplin.

There is still time to catch a show at the Seventh Annual Capital Fringe Festival, which continues until July 29. With more than 140 productions, the vast selection has performances for all age groups.

As a Broadway musical, “The Addams Family” has had its share of tumult, upheaval and critical sneers before it ever went on the road, including the replacement of stars Nathan Lane and Bebe Neuwirth in mid-run.

For the last ten years, the AFI Silverdocs Festival has helped transform the quiet genre of documentary films into blockbuster movie events. This year, among the abundant festival features, George Plimpton steps into the limelight once more, with a wide-eyed documentary chronicling the life and times of this one-of-a-kind man. And The Georgetowner has its own unique connection to the film...

Running and walking enthusiasts, supporters of breast health and breast cancer research and generally fun individuals gathered at Hudson Restaurant on M Street May 2 to support the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

There is wider notice of Washington theater now that plays which began here are up for Tonys. Add to that a Regional Theater Tony for the Washington Shakespeare Theatre Company. Its artistic director Michael Kahn will accept the award in New York on June 10.

If you're out and about in the city between May 6 and 12, whether you're walking, reading a newspaper or texting on the Metro or bus, or on a bench or eating at your favorite restaurant across the city, check it out. Look up! Look out!

For the Washington National Opera, it's a first-time production of the epic opera, directed by the electrifying young American Thaddeus Strassberger and conducted by Philippe Auguin, running April 28 through May 21 at the Kennedy Center's Opera House. For costume designer Mattie Ullrich, making her WNO debut, "Nabucco" is "a dream assignment."

The Washington Savoyards, the professional light opera company, begin its 40th season, performing the music of the celebrated team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to positive reviews at the Atlas Theater. Performances continue through May 6.

Everybody in Washington's theater community will show up tonight for the 28th annual Helen Hayes Awards at the Warner Theatre, but that's only the beginning for what this year is theatreWeek in Washington, which would be April 23-29.

Seville's Rafaela Carrasco is a breathtaking dancer and one of the most important flamenco choreographers of the younger generation. She and her troupe performed at GWU's Lisner Auditorium in Washinton DC on March 7 during Flemenco Festival 2012.

The latest production of “1776,” at the Ford’s Theatre, is playing right during the longest-running reality show in the nation, the Republican Party race for the presidential nomination. How 36 seconds ago.

In Jason Grote’s new play “Civilization (All You Can Eat),” now getting a sharp and haunting staging at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, everybody’s hungry all of the time. Hungry, not so much for food, as for the top-heavy buffet of life and stuff that’s out there like a sparkling city-as-a-mall, but now beyond the reach of our burdensome absurdly high-interest credit cards

Actor Edward Gero has spent the better part of the last year playing American Abstract Expressionist painter Mark Rothko, in the intensely thoughtful play “Red.” Gero spoke with The Georgetowner about becoming an iconic American figure.

If you’ve seen Holly Twyford on stage, talked with her on the phone or during an interview at a coffee shop on 14th Street, or listened to her accept yet another Helen Hayes award for acting, there’s one constant. It’s her voice.

Director P.J. Paparelli often refers to the title of his new gig at the Shakespeare Theatre Company as “the two gents.” That would be “The Two Gentleman of Verona,” one of Shakespeare’s earliest works, and to Paparelli’s way of thinking, his most youthful. One way or another, you can expect that youth will be served in his production of the play.

Near the end of his “Classic Conversations” visit with Shakespeare Theatre Company Artistic Director Michael Kahn, actor and sometime movie star Kevin Kline noted that he loved the big parts, the scary parts.

Twenty five years ago, an unlikely phenomenon and juggernaut burst on the Broadway musical scene. It had a huge set including a giant barricade from which young revolutionaries battled the powers that be in a sort of Occupy Paris spectacle.

For sophisticates, the very hip, cool and urban trendy, there are so many targets in Samuel Hunter’s “A Bright New Boise” (now at the Woolly Mammoth Theatre through November 13) to feel smug, snarky and snide about that it could have been a buffet of satire, enough material for a lifetime of Bill Maher monologues.

Even at 40, Ethan McSweeny looks too young to have done everything he’s done, to be, well, Ethan McSweeny.
He’s casually dressed, has a thin beard which still can’t prevent him from looking boyish, looks nonchalantly handsome, and is finishing up some salad after winding down a rehearsal for his production of “The Merchant of Venice” at the Washington Shakespeare Company in the Harman Center, which will open officially three days later.

Here’s something perfect: Shakespeare, music, The Castleton Festival Orchestra, and renowned Castleton director and conductor Lorin Maazel, all together at the Music Center at Strathmore June 30 to perform “Music Inspired by Shakespeare”.

Who knew that S & M, named after the very same Sacher-Masoch without the von, could be so much fun?
Readers are not required to answer the last question for the usual reasons, but really, folks, go check out Venus in Furs at the Studio Theatre.

It's that time of year again! We took some time to speak with Charles Fishman, executive producer of DC Jazz Festival, who talked about the DC's heart for Jazz. This year's festival is bigger and better, featuring artists like Bobby McFerrin at the Warner Theater.

The WNO announced that the dynamic and gifted opera and theater director Francesca Zambello will become its Artistic Advisor. Zambello comes with a varied resume, with work ranging from Disney to the English National Opera.

Believe it. “Follies” is no folly. It’s a big deal. A ground-up, full-blown revival of the groundbreaking Stephen Sondheim musical is now on stage at the Kennedy Center Opera House through June 19. It is the culmination of four years of planning, effort and work.

Sam Forman is a quintessential New York type in some ways. He is young, hip, very smart and a knowing young playwright and actor who has brought something to the theater that goes back to Chekhov, Neil Simon, even Woody Allen. Mostly, though, he’s brought himself.

What makes the Helen Hayes Awards unique is its celebration of this city’s theater community. It has blossomed into a kind of tribe and built a national reputation that is no longer a secret. For my money, we are right up there with Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Can you get the full measure of Shakespeare’s “King Lear” without hearing Lear’s verbal rage against the Gods? You bet you can—and without any of the words for that matter—in Synetic Theater’s “silent Shakespeare” series, now through April 24 at the Lansburgh and April 29 – May 9 at Synetic’s home base in Rosslyn.

New and fresh Irish playwright Enda Walsh is currently getting a full-blown festival exposure at the Studio Theater, with “Penelope,” his contemporary version of the story of Ulysses and his wife, having already been performed. Now its “The Walworth Face” and “The New Electric Ballroom,” starring some of DC’s finest veteran actors and actresses, being performed simultaneously in the Milton and at the Mead theaters, respectively.

A collection of Samuel Beckett's one-acts, directed by Peter Brook, will be at the Kennedy Center for One Weekend Only, April 14-17. In an interview with this iconic director, Brooks talks about producing the work of his old friend, as well as Beckett's humor, genius, current relevancy, and the public's perceptions.

This is the 25th anniversary for Filmfest DC, which opened April 7 and closes April 17 at locations and venues throughout the city, and it’s also the same for Filmfest DC Director Tony Gittens, the festival’s first and only director over the years. “We didn’t used to have all these new delivery systems and ways of looking at films,” he said. “There was no digital film, no Internet, no Youtube, nothing like that. Sundance didn’t exist as a major marketplace for independent films.”

“Liberty Smith,” a kind of tongue-in-cheek, young-hero retelling of some major events of the Revolutionary War, has a number of things going on for it. “We think this is going to be great entertainment,” says Paul Tetreault, Ford’s executive artistic director. “We have a big, Broadway-style musical here, which will appeal to the whole family.”

The recent death of Elizabeth Taylor and its coverage around Washington highlighted the nurture-torture nature of the relationship between Washington and Hollywood, like an electric wire was connecting the two cities. People remember her here; just ask the senator, the gossip writers, theatergoers and the folks at the Whitman Walker Clinic.

If you want to know a little bit about what’s going on in the vibrant Washington area theatre scene, as well as a little bit about its history, check out the Helen Hayes Awards nominations. They’ve always provided clues about what’s hot and what’s not, trends and directions.

The Kennedy Center

In the annals of 20th-Century American theater history, there are few playwrights more influential, more continually fascinating to theatergoers and theater makers, than Tennessee Williams and Edward Albee. And both playwrights are getting their full due in two ambitious, wide-reaching, far-flung local festivals. Arena stage will be hosting a two-month long Edward Albee festival. And “The Glass Menagerie Project” at Georgetown University is part of a nationwide Tennessee Williams Centennial Festival...

Holly Twyford, Nancy Robinette and Kimberly Schraf are the matrons of the Washington theater scene, now performing together for the first time in Horton Foote's "The Carpetbagger's Daughters" at Ford's Theater.

Zimmerman has managed, over a couple of decades of directing and writing, to create a whole new kind of play, as yet difficult to fit into a descriptive category. And yet you come back to it: children, fairytales, storytelling, tales told around a campfire, the first writings of man. It’s that kind of thing, but made complicated, and made deep.

Cusack stars as the brimming-with-optimism Army nurse Nellie Forbush in 'South Pacific,' the role originated by the legendary Mary Martin in the 1940s original. Singing some iconic Rogers & Hammerstein songs like “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair” and “Wonderful Guy,” this national tour has brought her home in a big way.

You know the drill. It’s time to celebrate the holidays. Not Thanksgiving. That’s practically yesterday. We’re talking about THE HOLIDAYS, when families reunite, and the grandparents will inevitably come bearing sweaters for everybody.

The 60 year old Arena Stage and its Artistic Director Molly Smith have recently opened the doors to its architecturally majestic new Mead Center for American Theater to rave reviews with a revival of the great American classic, Rodger‘s and Hammersteins‘s “Oklahoma!” This has prompted my look back to the inception of an important milestone in the history and development of the American theater.

Steel Burkhardt and Paris Remillard, two of the stars of the musical revival of "Hair," at the Kennedy Center through November 21st, talk about what it means to star in a counter-revolutionary musical from the 1960s in 21st Century .

Major change is coming to the Washington National Opera. Placido Domingo, the world-renowned
tenor, who has been general director of the company since 1996, helping to launch it to another level of respect, stature and accomplishment, will be leaving his post as of June, 2011.

That mother-ship construction project people have been noting at the site of the old Arena Stage near the Southwest waterfront is finally set to open its pearly gates to the public. After two and a half years of construction, Arena Stage at the Mead Center for American Theater will have a ribbon cutting ceremony and Homecoming Grand Opening Celebration on Saturday, October 23, lasting almost all day long from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m.

After a sold out run of performances last fall, the VelocityDC Dance Festival is coming back for a second season. This vibrant performance experience presented by the Washington dance community will hopefully continue to be a seasonal offering in the DC Area.

Nicholas Kent and The Tricycle Theater, a UK based theater company, is touring a landmark project, "the Great Game: Afghanistan", across the United States: a near full-day marathon of theater dealing with the past century's conflicts in Afghanistan, from the British Empires efforts in the first half of the 20th century and the Soviet Union invasion, to the modern ongoing turmoil with America. A revelatory must-see for all defense contractors, state department and federal employees, national security officers, and international advisers – in other words, anyone working in and around the DC Metro area.

Almost any production of William Shakespeare’s “All’s Well That Ends Well” is bound to be problematic. That’s because the play is, well, one of those problem plays in the Shakespeare canon — plays which are difficult to stage, about which there are critical misgivings, to say the least. To that category you could probably lend the title “lesser Shakespeare”. They don’t go down well with their after-taste and often don’t play as well as they should because lesser characters sometimes take over the play. Put “Cymbeline” on that list alongside “Pericles”. Perhaps add “Troilus and Cressida,” “Henry VIII,” and even “The Winter’s Tale,” — let alone “Timon of Athens” to which we can only say, when’s the last time you’ve seen that?

With Sarah Ruhl, who penned "The Vibrator Play" at Woolly Mammoth, you’re going to get ambushed at every turn with reveries, lyrical side trips, and unexpected behavior by almost all of the characters. And you'll love it.

As Artistic Director Molly Smith puts it, “We are finally home again.” But Arena's home isn't exactly what it used to be — in fact, it's about to complete a colossal renovation that will soon light up Washington's theater scene once more.

"Passing Strange," now performing at the Studio Theatre's 2nd Stage, taps into a long tradition of growing-pain and coming-of-age tales. But it also feels and plays as if the whole couple of hours had been lived and imagined right on the spot.

The Shakespeare Theatre Company calls its productions of “Richard II” and “Henry V” now being performed at Sidney Harman Hall’s “The Leadership Repertory.” I call it two of the most outstanding Shakespeare productions I’ve ever encountered, period.